Ramen with Shrimp and Vegetables

It's been one wild and crazy ride here in my house. Lots of long distance traveling (which is made even longer by having a 6 month old with ya) and just lots of events going on. All this while, I'm trying desperatly to stay on my life change plan. Eh...it didn't go so well while we were traveling, but now that I'm back and our traveling is pretty much done for awhile (save for an anniversary get away this weekend) I've gotten back into the habit of things.

After doing some thinking and looking over some stuff, I've decided that I needed to bump my calorie count down from 1480 a day to 1200. I'm not going to freak out if I go a little bit over, but I think this will really help me lose weight. My goal is to lose 2 pounds a week, but if I'm over, that's awesome; if I'm under, oh well, a loss is a loss.

So, while I'm dealing with all this craziness, I'm also trying to find fast foods I can cook which are (somewhat) healthy for me. I came across this recipe in one of my cookbooks and thought I would give it a try. I'm usually not a huge ramen fan, but this tasted really good. More after the recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 lb uncooked peeled deveined medium shrimp, thawed if frozen and tails peeled.
• 2 cups water
• 1 package (3 oz) Oriental-flavor ramen noodle soup mix
• 1 bag (1 lb) fresh stir-fry vegetables
• 1/4 cup stir-fry sauce

Directions

• Heat 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Cook shrimp in skillet 2 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until pink and firm. Remove shrimp from skillet; keep warm.
• Heat water to boiling in same skillet. Break up noodles from soup mix into water; stir until slightly softened. Stir in vegetables.
• Heat to boiling. Boil 4 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are crisp-tender. Stir in seasoning packet from soup mix and stir-fry sauce. Cook 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently, until hot. Stir in shrimp.

Soon after this picture was taken, this bowl was empty

My Take

All in all, I loved this recipe. It's quick and easy to do, and, maybe for the shrimp, you may have everything on hand. There were a few things I changed, but they were very minor, and probably didn't change the taste of it too much.

First of all, I didn't read the ingredients carefully when I went shopping so I bought pre-cooked shrimp. It wasn't that big of a deal, though. I just heated them up in the skillet and took off the tails. It might make it a bit quicker, but just make sure you don't cook them for too long.

Secondly, I already had some frozen asparagus stir-fry in the freezer, so I used that and just cooked it the same. It had some little noodles in it as well, but I didn't mind as I felt that there was a lot of shrimp and it needed more noodles any ways. I think it had to cook for a little bit longer, but it wasn't terribly long.

Also, I didn't have any stir-fry sauce (didn't even know there was such a thing) so instead I added a little bit of soy sauce and a few sprinkles of sesame seed oil. I didn't want to add too much, because I didn't want to overpower the taste from the seasoning packet. 

This recipe makes 4 servings, but since it was all I was eating, I ate 2 servings at a time. Each serving is 210 calories with 4 grams of fat. Pretty cook for a quick, yummy, Asian meal. This will definitely be on my "make again" list.

Until next time, kiddos: Eat healthy, Exercise, and Have Fun!

All About Cross Stitching

As of late, I've been having this huge urge to cross stitch. I love cross stitching. I learned it from my mom when I was just a kid, and now it's a stress reliever (and sometimes a stress creator!). Some of you may recall that I had another blog called "Shiloh's Stitches" in which I talked about the various projects I was working on. Well, today I would like to show you what my current cross stitching project is. It's called "The Mighty Samurai" and it's Dimensions kit #3881

The finished product

I started it back in either November or December of last year and after I left work in mid-January, I pretty much worked on it all day, every day. So, before Lucy was born, I got a lot of it done. The picture below is what I've gotten done as of Sunday. I did some more yesterday, so it's not totally current, but close enough to give you an idea of close I'm getting.

The yellow stain you see on the bottom is from me accidentally setting the project down on an open highlighter. Ugh...I'm hoping that most of it will come out when I wash it, but I guess we'll see.

The plan is that when I'm all finished with this, I'll frame it and put it up in our bedroom which has an Asian theme. Whenever I get done with my two Geisha girls, he'll go inbetween them. He's such a ladies man. It must be the peacock by his side. :)